Eight pages. That’s how long the menu runs at the area’s newest sushi restaurant, which opened March 23 at Point Ruston, a retail-residential development that straddles Tacoma and Ruston.

This is the first South Sound location for the Portland-based sushi chain that was founded in 1995 as a neighborhood sushi haunt in northwest Portland. Since then, it has grown to a two-state franchise with numerous investors and 16 locations (two in Seattle).

Here’s a first-bite tour of what the restaurant offers at lunch (dinner prices will be slightly higher, but it’s the same menu).

It’s this newspaper’s policy to avoid criticism of food or service during a restaurant’s first month, which is why the focus here is on descriptions and the concept.

That big menu: It’s actually broken into two separate menus. The first is a mammoth four-page maki/nigiri list that takes two hands to negotiate. You use a dry-erase marker to indicate your order in the box next to each sushi name. They make sushi ordering simple here.

The atmosphere: Definitely a younger vibe, with pulsating dance-style music and a neon palette of pink, green and deeper earth tones. Tall ceilings and concrete floors bounce the noise. Oversize windows let in lots of light.

Seating: 70 seats broken among two- and four-person tables. No booths, it’s all tables here. The sushi bar has seating for seven, but half the seats have a blocked view of the behind-the-bar action.

Next restaurant openings at Point Ruston: Jewel Box, a cafe, is under construction and Farrelli’s, the pizza restaurant, also plans to open at Point Ruston. Vera’s Burger Shack is no longer opening next door to the theater and Point Ruston property developers are in talks with another restaurant for that space.